They’d been together before, but they’d both been denying the bond then. Seeing them last night—open, honest, fully embracing themselves—was beautiful.
And when Blaise had turned that need on me, I hadn’t felt embarrassed—not even a flicker of it—that Ambrose was watching. Instead, it felt right. Right to be laid bare, figuratively as well as literally. Right to feel that shared current of emotion moving between the three of us, to understand, without any doubt, that this was my destiny too.
The urge to claim it and to seal it had been primal. Instinctive. Something that took over as we lay tangled together in a breathless heap of limbs and sweat, the world narrowed down to just us.
My entire body quivered at the memory.
That overwhelming sense of completeness.
And the earth-shattering release that had followed, as if sealing the bond had unlocked something deeper than pleasure alone.
Ambrose let out a gentle cough, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Sorry,” I said, heat flooding my cheeks.
“Never be sorry for feeling that way,” he replied softly. “But I would love to get to know you more today—if that’s okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my mouth not to betray me with a stream of word vomit and an ill-timed“Actually, let’s go wake Blaise and do that again before we have the Q and A.”I might not have been remotely embarrassed anymore, but my mouth clearly hadn’t received the memo.
Ambrose’s smile widened. “Great. And when Blaise wakes up, we can maybe talk about returning to the coven.”
The comment was directed at both me and Creep, and it jolted me back to reality. I’d momentarily forgotten that Ambrose had arrived with a warning about Isadora.
Creep, apparently, had not.
Every object in the kitchen that could be remotely considered a weapon lifted into the air at once, sharp points and blunt ends all angled toward the door as if she’d already decided war was a far better option than retreat.
The air practically vibrated with her lust for blood.
Creep was prone to violence, yes, but it was usually born of mischief. I’d never once believed shetrulywanted to cause physical harm.
Until now.
I couldn’t help wondering why Isadora—the mother of Creep’s favorite person in the world—was the one person capable of provoking genuine, murderous rage.
“You can’tactuallykill her,” I said carefully.
Creep, sitting rigid, turned her glassy gaze up to me.
“I mean it,” I pressed. “Unless it’s genuinely life or death, you can’t just kill someone.”
The weapons hovering throughout the kitchen trembled once more, then reluctantly dropped back to their places. Creep folded her arms, tucking her chin into the stiff collar of her dress like a child who’d just been told no candy before dinner.
Ambrose—now officially the bravest person I knew—leaned forward and placed a gentle hand on Creep’s shoulder and squeezed.
Creep looked up at him. Something unspoken passed between them, and then, gradually, her small porcelain body eased, the rigid fury draining away.
She hopped down from the table and pitter-pattered out of the kitchen, no doubt off to re-strategize a nonlethal way of disabling Isadora should she ever dare show her face on the doorstep.
“Creep seems to love you,” I said, settling into the chair opposite Ambrose.
He smiled at that, soft and a little private, but didn’t elaborate on how he’d managed to bond with her in a matter of hours when it had taken me months.
Instead of prying—because whatever Ambrose-the-murderous-house-whisperer secrets he possessed were clearly his own—I asked him to tell me about himself.
And what a delight that turned out to be.
He told me about his early adventures in the mortal world, back when the young incubi were encouraged to explore and learn how the mortal world worked. He told me about Lochran’s near-death experience flying into a storm that had very nearly killed him, and Devlin’s (who I now realized had to be my cousin Jen’s fated mate) ill-advised rescue of a Hell’s Gate pup—and hissheer dumb luck at being allowed to leave the pack with all his limbs still attached.
